Chapter Two: Don't Panic
The park is awash in flashing blue and red and white lights. Half of the neighborhood is outside on their porches, on their lawns; the braver ones hover next to the yellow tape and the officers posted to keep them there. Most of them are dressed in their pajamas. One of them is wearing bunny slippers.
Jerri Stephens rubs the back of her neck where a headache is brewing.
"Hey! Anderson!"
She turns. It's Officer Bobby Kowaleski. She lifts a hand at him.
Jerri counts five news vans along the edge of the crime scene; five teams of reporters lined up next to each other, their backs to the chaos.
Great, she thinks. That's what we need.
Even worse are the two rental SUV's parked on the grass next to the ambulance.
"Fucking feds," Kowaleski says as he jogs over. "They're taking the crime scene."
There's a shock.
"Yep," she says. "They say why?"
"Some bullshit about a murder over in Indiana."
"Hmm."
The feds stick out under the portable spot lights. They're the only ones in suits. There are four of them, three men and a woman. One of the men catches Jerri's attention. She knows his face. She's got it in a file back at her apartment.
She grinds her teeth.
"—'course that doesn't explain the John Doe," Kowaleski says.
"Oh yeah?" Jerri says.
The fed squats down, peering at something on the ground. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a pen, and pokes at it.
"You didn't see it?" Kowaleski says.
Jerri blinks and looks over at him.
"Nah," she says. "Sattler had me running patrol. I just got here."
"That sucks. Here, come on. I'll show you."
Two of the agents cluster around the coroner's van. The woman unzips a body bag. Jerri tags after the Officer as they pick their way over, past the CSI's and their flashing cameras, careful not to touch anything. A field of broken glass glitters all over the road. They stop at the edge of it.
"Shit," Jerri says.
"I know," Kowaleski says.
It's a yellow sports car, some Italian thing, all sharp angles and glaring headlights. One of the wiper blades is missing and the windshield is cracked. But the real damage is in the back. It's completely demolished. The trunk is flattened, pancaked all over the road. Pieces lie everywhere. The rear wheels have popped off—a CSI is taking pictures of one of them next to a tree some twenty feet away. There are spatters of some sort of dark liquid; it's not engine oil.
"Where'd they find the driver?" she says.
Kowaleski grins. "That's the thing. They're not sure who they found. He was back there."
"In the trunk?"
Kowaleski rolls his eyes. "Jesus, Anderson. It's a Lamborghini. The trunk's in the front. How do you not know that?"
Jerri shrugs.
"That's the engine," Kowaleski says. "They found the guy's head, just the head, in the engine."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. It's some real X-Files shit."
"Huh," Jerri says. She looks at her watch. "Hey, I gotta get back. Meet me at the station?"
"Sure."
It takes three minutes to weave through the crime scene. She parked her cruiser on the edge, away from prying eyes, out of sight of the reporters. She climbs in, shuts the door, and reaches into her pocket for her cell phone. She flips it open and dials.
It'll take twenty-five minutes to get back to her apartment. She can have everything packed up and the place wiped down in an hour, maybe two. In three hours time, "Officer Anderson" will be a distant memory.
The ringing stops. There's a click on the other end and then silence.
"This is Stephens," Jerri says. "Tell Berkman we've got another one."
Hunter O'Nion listens to the distant echoes of a car engine and waits. The parking garage is almost empty. Three other cars are tucked against the far wall, by the elevator. It's 2:32 in the morning and it's still eighty-seven degrees out. Not that it bothers him. Not anymore.
Because Hunter isn't really human anymore. What's left of him is curled up with the machinery hidden in the back of a yellow Lamborghini named Sunstreaker. Or used to be. Because Sunstreaker isn't there anymore, either. It's just Hunter, alone in his head, sitting beneath a skyscraper in the middle of Dallas, waiting for his chance to break into what might be the headquarters of a secret organization bent on world domination.
This is crazy, he thinks.
And that's not even the start of it.
He's got a comm-line open. He's been keeping it that way, on and off, for the last week, waiting to hear something. Waiting to hear from a ship hidden beneath Lake Michigan. The one that, like Sunstreaker's consciousness, has also disappeared.
One week ago, Hunter woke up in a repo lot in southern Georgia. There was a boot on his front, left tire. A peeling, orange tag had been slapped on his back bumper. And he had no idea why. The last thing he remembered was fleeing Florida with Sunstreaker shouting in his mind.
Hunter sighs. The sound is pure noise. Because he doesn't breathe anymore.
Don't go there, he thinks. You've got a job to do.
There are five security cameras between him and the elevator. He watches their feeds on a sort of visor that folds down over his own, human eyes. He can see himself tucked into a dark corner. He'll have to disable them.
It's tricky. Hunter's never been plugged into a computer network with his brain before. He has to visualize what he's doing, assign icons in his head as he navigates the system.
He doesn't cut the feed. Behind the footage on his screen he watches eight moving, green dots. Eight people in the building above him. One of them is bound to be watching the surveillance.
He's been recording all five cameras for the last forty-five minutes. Instead, he cuts them off, uploads the recorded feed into the network, and inserts it. A tiny blip, not noticeable to the human eye, and he's done. He flashes his headlights. The image on his visor doesn't change.
Okay, he thinks.
The other cars in the lot have been there for two and a half hours. None of the people inside have come down. No one else is in there. He needs to go now, while it's quiet.
Hunter eases out of the corner. He doesn't need an engine to move forward. This body is no more car than he is. The only sound is the whisper of tires on the pavement. When he's got enough clearance to keep himself from banging into the wall, he closes his eyes.
First, comes a whirring grind; it reverberates throughout his entire body. He starts to break apart. His undercarriage separates, pieces twist around to become fingers, hands, arms to push himself up with. The hood of the car splits down the middle. Feet form. Legs. Soon, he's fifteen feet of yellow robot crouched in an underground parking garage.
Or so he seems.
He's only done the next part once before. He lifts up his hands—big, black, metal ones— to grab his head. And he concentrates.
A deep thunk and a rapid clicking in his neck. Suddenly, his head is free. He can't feel his hands anymore. The yellow body bends down and sets the head on the pavement. The two fins—one on either side—crack and shift apart. Smaller hands emerge. Pieces fold into legs and hips. Then the top of the helmet slides back and Hunter O'Nion feels air on his real face for the first time in days.
He blinks. He rubs his face—the only part of him that's still human. The hands are made of metal. They're the right size, the same shape, and they work just as well as flesh and blood hands. But they're a few degrees cooler than they should be.
The muggy air settles on him. Despite not breathing, he can still somehow smell the heat and humidity and engine oil.
The visor still covers his eyes. He's looking out, into the parking lot, and also watching the video footage at the same time. It shows a yellow Lamborghini parked in the corner. It doesn't show a cyborg standing around or the headless robot behind him.
Hunter turns. The robotic shell is crouched there, hands extended. He focuses and the thing straightens and shuffles back into the corner. It kneels down.
What'll happen if anyone comes down here and sees this?
He can't turn back. He's been scoping the building out for the last two days. If this place is connected to Machination, someone is bound to notice him. If he doesn't do this now, he may not get another chance.
He heads for the elevator.
The ride up is boring. Twenty-two floors of soft-rock radio piped through the speakers. Then he's there. The door lets out a ding and opens.
There are no cameras in here. Which is why he's picked this level. People who wire their entire building, people who want to be able to see every nook and cranny in the place, do not leave an entire floor dark for no reason.
He steps out. His foot sinks into thick carpeting.
He's standing in some sort of reception area. A long, low desk cut into a half circle sits in the middle of the room. To his right, a dark hallway. To his left, a set of double doors. He notices that for all the fancy desks and plush carpeting, there's nowhere to sit.
Hunter tries the double doors first. It's some sort of conference room: tables and chairs set against a backdrop of floor-to-ceiling windows. Nothing spectacular. The other hallway is lined with offices, all of them empty. It ends with a single door. Hunter tries the handle. It's unlocked. He glances back.
This is way too easy.
This is not a lackey's office. It's at least the size of the conference room, most of it empty space. Potted ferns sit in the corners next to another huge wall of windows. The walls are lined with photographs: some old guy in a suit standing with other old guys in suits. A monstrous desk sits to the far right, underneath a massive sign with the words "Epsilon Holdings" encased in a stylized swoosh. And next to the desk, tucked into the far corner, is a stand of two, five-foot tall filing cabinets.
Bingo.
The filing cabinets are locked. It takes Hunter two seconds to rip them open. He almost drops the first drawer as it comes flying out at him. He catches it before it spills out all over the floor. Inside are folders, labeled: Aylor, Bazizeh, Bath. Another drawer: Suzuki, Svenson, Swain. All of them are filled with senseless paperwork—data sheets and reports, pages of numbers that Hunter can't make heads or tails of. Stock information, contracts. All of it mundane. All of it useless.
"Damnit," Hunter says.
Of course you were expecting… what? A great big folder labeled 'Machination'? Or how about 'My plans for world domination'? Because that would be the smart thing to do. Leave stuff lying around where some bungling idiot can just waltz in and find it.
"Damn," he says. He slides the drawers back in and leans his head on the cool frame.
What the hell am I doing here? I don't even know what I'm looking for!
He clenches his fists—machine, it's all machine now. It takes everything he has not to drive one through the filing cabinet. But leaving a gaping hole in the thing isn't exactly subtle and Mr. Chairman, whoever he is, will notice in the morning and wonder how it got there.
Don't do this, he thinks. You can't afford to do this. Calm down. Keep looking.
For one, small moment, he almost, almost sounds like Sunstreaker. Hunter manages a smile. God, he was such a prick. But at least he was there. At least I wasn't alone.
Unlike now, standing by himself in a dark office on the twenty-second floor of what could be the secret lair of the people that ruined his life, ruined the life of at least one Autobot. And he doesn't even know what he's looking for. He doesn't know how long his body is going to stay hidden, doesn't know if he's managed to set off a silent alarm somewhere, wondering where he's going to go if this doesn't—
Stop it.
Hunter stands straight and unclenches his hands. He closes his eyes, counts to eight, and opens them. He turns to the desk.
Three drawers line the side. He goes through them all and finds nothing but more meaningless paperwork, a watch, a package of golf balls, and a half-empty tick-tack bottle.
This can't have been for nothing. I know they're connected. There has to be something, some sort of trail.
He doesn't notice at first when a dot on his visor changes colors. It's not until it starts to flash that he looks up from the desk and to the left. It's turned yellow. The words "proximity alert" scroll across the bottom. He stares at it until his brain registers that the flashing dot is moving. It's rising up, toward him.
It's coming straight at Hunter's floor. The teen moves away from the desk and cracks the door open. He presses the side of his face against the frame. A moment later and the dot slows. Hunter hears a soft ding. Light spills into the reception area down the hall. A shadow moves; a man steps out.
Hunter squints. The man is too far away, he can't see any—
One moment, the guy is a speck of light blue some fifty feet away; the next, he rushes forward, fills Hunter's vision. Hunter almost yelps; he manages to swallow it back before he can give himself away.
What the hell?
It's the screen. It's zoomed in. Hunter looks to the left and then back. He can see the receptionist's desk like he's standing next to it.
"Whoa," he says.
The man walks forward. He's wearing a blue shirt and dark pants. He's older, maybe in his late forties, but what catches Hunter's attention is the patch on his right arm, the one that says "security."
"Aw, crap."
The guard lifts something from his belt. A light snaps on. Hunter sinks down into a crouch, his head level with the doorknob. The guard walks over to the doors to the conference room, cracks them open, disappears inside. He reappears five seconds later. Hunter ducks back as the guard lifts his arm.
The guard shines his flashlight through the gap. A small strip of carpet lights up. Muffled footfalls come down the hall.
Shit, oh shit, oh shit!
He looks around for some place to hide.
The desk!
He stumbles to his feet. He can hear one of the office doors opening down the hall. He darts across the carpet, throws himself down behind the polished behemoth and scoots under it. The back goes all the way down, right to the floor. He brings his legs in, curls up as best he can with Sunstreaker's pointy ear fins jutting up from his shoulders.
This isn't going to work, he thinks. That guy's gonna check over here and he's gonna see me and how the hell do I get out of here?
Footsteps stop outside the door. Hunter wishes he had enough room to kick himself.
He's left it open.
The wall above the desk lights up. Three footsteps, muffled by the thick carpet, and a pause.
His arm is sticking out, he's sure of it. The guard must be drawing his gun. Any second now, he's gonna open fire and Hunter has no goddamn backup plan because, hey, it's just breaking into a skyscraper, right? Why work on a backup plan?
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
A soft click. Hunter tenses. Then a chirp and the guard says, "Twenty-two is green." Another chirp and the voice on the other end says, "Copy."
And just like that, the guard walks away. Hunter doesn't move. Not until the door shuts, the latch clicks, not until he watches the yellow dot move back down the hall, stop outside the elevator and start back down. Only then does he let himself slump. The back of his head thumps on the side of the desk.
"Way too close," he says. He unfurls himself, careful not to gouge out a strip of carpet along the way.
He needs to leave. One close call is enough for the night. If he hasn't found anything by now…
The dot stops flashing and changes back to a harmless, soft green. He stands up, runs his hand over his face.
Okay, he thinks, get back to the stairwell. Take that back down to the parking garage and get out of here.
He starts to move around the desk and stops when he bumps into the bottom drawer. It's still open. He reaches down, starts to close it, and freezes.
How did the guard miss that?
He looks down only to find that the building is clear. No dots anywhere. His fingers tingle.
And that's when he hears it: a soft noise, something he wouldn't have, couldn't have picked up with human ears. A click and a long, slow scrape, like a doorknob turning. The room is dark, lit only by his visor and the ambient light of the city outside.
No dots. None. The entire building is dark and empty. Even the street… no. Not empty. He watches something, he thinks it's a car, suddenly disappear. Ten seconds later and it reappears on the other side of the block.
Like a blind spot, he thinks.
He swallows and pads over to the door. He opens it slowly; the noise of the latch sounds loud. He peers through. The hallway is dark, deserted. Nothing moves.
Getting paranoid?
Hunter stands there for a moment, trying to convince himself that he's just overreacting. Maybe the visor is glitching out. Stress. It's just stress—
A shadow rolls into view down the hall. He has a second to register the movement, see a flash of something shiny before his brain recognizes the shape. It's a man. And he's holding a gun.
"Shit."
He throws himself back. Bullets tear through the door, spraying him with shrapnel and he falls back, pawing at the air, trying to cover his eyes. The gun is loud, way louder than anything he's ever heard on TV, a steady, rapid BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! He can feel himself screaming but he can't hear it over the cacophony.
Just like that, the world goes silent. At first, he thinks they've stopped shooting, but the door is still blowing apart. He's gone deaf. He's turned his ears off.
They're coming for him. Hunter ducks down and sprints, tries to keep his head down and his arms close. Then, miraculously, he's through the bullets and halfway across the room. He almost plows into the desk. He can feel vibrations in the floor now and imagines booted feed pounding down the hall.
He grabs the desk and hefts it up like Superman. He turns, takes a few steps. He sees a flurry of movement through the holes in the door. It starts to swing open—he sees a gloved hand reaching in.
The desk flies through the air, bounces once, and lands against the door. Hunter slams into it before the gunmen can react. He digs his feet into the carpet and pushes—
Something crunches. Hunter doesn't let himself think about that.
They're ramming the door. He presses both hands against his barricade, hopes that it will hold the door together. The thick wood is blasted, pockmarked with gaping holes. Movement behind it. He wonders how long it will take someone to stick their gun through—
Something slams into his right shoulder. It throws him forward. He scrambles back to hold the desk. Guns stick through the holes and swivel down. The air next to his cheek snaps. A bullet just misses his face. He ducks to the side.
Oh god, oh god! What the hell do I do?
The desk shudders. It scoots across the carpet. He has maybe two seconds before they're in. His shoulder is on fire. There's nothing else in the room to hide behind, nothing to use as a weapon. The only exit is through the windows and a twenty-two story drop is a long way to fall, even for a cyborg.
Wood splinters. The desk goes flying. The first gunman is inside.
I need my body! I need it now!
Someone climbs in.
Shit, shit, shit!
The man's gun is pointed right at him. Hunter doesn't think; his arms shoot up, over his head.
"Whoa!" he says. "No, no! I surrender!"
More gunmen enter the room, spreading out, surrounding him. He crouches there, forehead tingling, wondering just when someone will pull the trigger, just when a bullet will rip through his skull and spatter whatever is left of his brains—
His ears turn back on.
"—on the ground now! Get on the ground!"
"Okay!" Hunter says. He lowers himself onto his stomach.
God, this can't be happening.
He needs out. He can't get caught, not now. He eyeballs the windows.
"Face down!"
Shit!
His hands are on the carpet. He's close enough to smell it. One of the gunmen moves forward. His weight drops down onto Hunter's back. Hands close around his wrists.
God, no!
A sound outside, something crunching and crashing.
His arms are wrenched down, around and behind his back. The gunman fumbles for something. Another moves in.
He's gonna be sick. The room sways. He catches a glimpse of one of them lift a wrist and say, "Secured."
The floor beneath him trembles. Suddenly, the whole room dips. The man pinning him falls forward.
"What the—" one of them says.
Movement out of the corner of his eye. Glass shatters. Warm, humid air wafts over him. Hunter twists his head, sees a flash of yellow, and a large, black hand reaching through the jagged remains of the windows. It plows into the swarm of gunmen. Three of them are swatted through the air. The rest keep shooting until it makes a second pass and knocks them head over heels.
His first, irrational thought is: It's Sunstreaker! But then reality asserts itself and he realizes that it's his robotic body.
How the hell is it out there?
The hand pulls back out and latches onto the windowsill. The body shifts; the room rocks.
It's hanging onto the side.
Hunter's robotic body has pulled a King Kong.
The man sitting on him swears. He lets go of Hunter's wrists and reaches for his weapon. Hunter pushes himself up with one hand and grabs a fistful of cloth in the other. He pulls the man down; he lands face-first on the carpet. Then Hunter is up, running for the windows. The arm in the room lifts up, fingers stretched, reaching for Hunter.
A bullet clips the side of his head. Hunter stumbles. The gunmen are getting back to their feet. One of them shouts into his wrist. Sparks light up on his shell's torso as they shoot it.
Something hits him just above the left knee, like someone took a baseball bat to it. He goes down into the shattered glass. His arm—the giant, yellow one—drops down behind him, sheltering him from the gunfire. He glances down and sees a hole. Dark fluid spurts out and dribbles down his leg.
Hunter throws himself into transforming. His knees pull a freaky reversal; he can feel the peculiar grind. He tries not to look, tries not to wonder if it's bone making that noise or just gears mimicking bone, tries not to picture how muscle and sinew would have to tear and fold in like that. The wound to his knee doesn't even slow the process and he hopes that the bullet went all the way through, hopes the wound isn't as bad as it feels.
His arms fold up and turn inward. Suddenly, his right shoulder stops. Pain bites into his neck. The golden, robotic arm jerks. Hunter twists around and peers through the gloom at his shoulder. There's a ragged hole, just above the pointy head fin jutting from his shoulder. That fluid—black, thick stuff—seeps out, smearing the cabling bunched up over his bicep.
Shit! Is the bullet still in there?
His arm won't turn. He can't see the bullet, can't pull it out. He doesn't have time. Sooner or later someone outside is going to notice the yellow robot hanging off the skyscraper.
Come on! Come on!
He tries to shove the pain away, focus on making his arm change. The floor vibrates beneath him. Footsteps. They're coming.
Fucking go!
His shoulder lets out a squealing grind. His arm pops out of its socket and twists up like it's supposed to. The rest passes by in the strange-familiar sensation of becoming a piece of human origami. The last thing to go is his head. Panels over his chest slide up and his head folds down; his chin tucks into where his collarbone used to be. The world goes dark. Then the visor lights up and he can see again. It's like watching an I-Max movie a few centimeters from his eyeballs. He watches his hand lift up, feels the fingers close around him. Slight disorientation as he's lifted up and the carpet rushes past in a blur before dropping away and he stares twenty-two stories down to the ground below.
Don't panic, he thinks. Do not panic!
As soon as he clears the windowsill, he turns himself—his head—around so that he's looking back into the room. The gunmen have regrouped. Their guns flash. The bullets don't mean much anymore, not with his armor plating. He brings himself up to where he thinks his neck is. A grind reverberates through his body and he catches on something. Then a snap. He can feel himself holding himself. He can feel the bullets pinging off his larger frame.
I gotta get out of here!
Which is easier said than done. Holes are punched into the side of the building, trailing away beneath him. He's got his feet buried somewhere around the twentieth floor. His right hand hovers over his head, the left wrapped around the top, left corner of the roof. It's a long way down and though he's sheltered within this body, there's something about clinging to the face of a skyscraper as it sways in the wind that makes him glad he doesn't have to worry about wetting himself.
He can't think about falling. Can't imagine himself crumpling like a soda can when he hits the ground, tries not to envision the way his real body will be skewered when his legs drive up into his torso and pieces—
Stop that. Seriously. Just move your foot—oh. Oops.
A piece of the twentieth floor spirals down into the night. He winces when he hears a distant crash.
I really hope that wasn't someone's car.
His left foot dangles in the empty space where a chunk of carpeted floor used to be. Apparently, the architects didn't have a three ton robot playing Spider-man in mind when they built the thing.
He lowers himself, digs his left foot in a convenient hole in the façade.
Okay, okay. Doing good. Just—wait.
The shooting has stopped.
Hunter looks up. He's still eye-level with the top floor, so he can very clearly see the grenade launcher as the gunman settles it on his shoulder and points it right at Hunter's face.
Oh. Shit.
The man squeezes the trigger. There's a bright flash. Hunter sees the smoke trail as the thing comes streaking toward him. He ducks. The sudden shift in weight is too much for the building; his handhold crumbles. The grenade hisses overhead and explodes somewhere behind him. And Hunter suddenly finds himself wind milling one arm.
"Whoa, whoa! No!"
The floor crumbles beneath his feet.
No!
He falls.
He claws at the wall, tries to dig in his fingers. He tears long gouges down the side of the skyscraper. But it doesn't hold—he weighs too much. He has three seconds to panic before he hits the ground.
The next thing he knows his visual screen flickers. He's staring up at the night sky. He's on his back. His whole body—human and robot—aches. His shoulder hurts so bad that for a moment he can't even move.
Debris floats down; mostly papers. The side of the building is slashed open in long, jagged tears. The one behind it has a hole blown out of the top floor. It's on fire. He can hear sirens in the distance and another, lower throbbing noise. It's a helicopter.
He manages to turn his head. His targeting array lights up with flashing yellow dots.
He sits up, has to wait for the world to stop spinning. Glass and bits of rubble crunch as he pushes himself to his feet. He sways. There's no sign of the gunmen. Epsilon Holdings is silent.
A soft alarm chimes in his ears. The incoming dots flash. A few painful seconds later and a chipped, slightly scuffed Lamborghini idles on the grass. Inside, Hunter waits for the pain to recede enough for him to inch out, through the decorative shrubbery, and onto the road. By the time the cops screech around the corner, he's already two blocks down, limping away.
What the hell was that? Hunter thinks.
Those guys were not security. He's never heard of a security company that carried sub-machine guns or grenade launchers. They'd looked military, professional, not corporate rental cops. If he had any doubts that Epsilon Holdings is involved with Machination, those doubts are long gone.
Shit.
Hunter speeds up and wonders if the rattling inside is a bad sign. He drifts into the left lane to get past a blue jeep. According to the map on his screen, there should be a highway entrance coming up in a few blocks. He's got to get out of Dallas for a little while, find someplace safe, someplace to plan his next move.
Maybe Chicago, he thinks. He glides back into the right lane. The ground drops away on either side and he can smell the river below. Check the lake again, see if there's something I missed. They must have left something. I don't think Ratchet would have just—
His proximity alert screeches to life. Hunter jumps and almost swerves into a minivan next to him. A dot flashes red.
"Weapons lock. Enemy targeting engaged," his visor says.
What.
The car ahead of him honks and veers to the side. A pair of headlights swerve into his lane. It's a car—red, low-slung, and it's headed right at him.
Whoa!
He slams his brakes, starts to turn, to get out of the way. The red car barrels at him. It doesn't even slow. Hunter tenses. At the last second, the red car pulls a high-speed 180. It slams into Hunter's side. He smashes into the railing. Hunter feels the metal groan and bend and then tear. The terrible feeling of weightlessness as he tips over, into empty air. And then the red car, falling right beside him, starts to unfold.
Holy…
A face emerges. Hunter doesn't get a good look. All he sees is the hate-filled snarl. And then they plunge into the river.
Thanks to everyone who added this to their favorites or alerts! And thanks again to KayDeeBlu for her awesome beta work!
Next chapter: Damaged